


Misbehave

by blue_wonderer, wonderingtheblue (blue_wonderer)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Barry is a prince of the Summer Court, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Bargains, Implied Past Len/Barry, M/M, Magic, Tavern owner Len, Temporary Amnesia, he went and lost his lover smh Barry, he's been looking for Len for a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 04:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15941765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/blue_wonderer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/wonderingtheblue
Summary: Len's been hiding from his unknown enemies in a small outpost town for a few years now, disguised as an unassuming barkeep. This changes when a mysterious traveler with sharp teeth and lightning on his skin enters his tavern one cold night.





	Misbehave

Len kicks out the last patron and locks the tavern door. 

He's _sure_ he locked the door. He doesn't miss those things. 

But when he's got three empty glasses clinking between his fingers as he wipes down the bar top with a wet rag, the hinges to the door squeak open, and a draft of chilled air blows into the room. He looks up to see a stranger silhouetted in the doorway, a flurry of snow about his shoulders and ankles, flakes tumbling past him into the warm room and melting on the floor. 

The door swings shut and the stranger strides into the light. He's in traveler's clothes, dark browns and greens, sensible trousers and shoes, a ragged cloak wrapped around him. He grins at Len, white teeth flashing. 

"Sorry, stranger," Len drawls, narrowing his eyes. "But we're closed." 

The stranger tilts his head, his eyes apparent to Len for the first time. They seem an ethereally bright green for half a moment, strange and alien and beautiful. And then it's gone and Len is left thinking that it was a trick of the light and the late hour. 

" _My_ entry was not barred," the stranger says cryptically, his voice soft and musical. "And there are no hours posted on your door. I thought it was an invitation to enter. I'm new in town, you see, just in from a long journey." 

Len sweeps a calculating gaze over his intruder. The stranger is young, handsome and clean of face, smartly groomed despite his well-worn traveler's garments. One would think he was just setting out on a journey instead of coming in from one, except this town is a small, isolated outpost, and Len knows everyone in it, he knows all who come and go and he's never seen this man before. 

He grits his teeth and forces a smile. "We wouldn't want to show a traveler such as yourself any unwelcome. What will it be?" 

The stranger laughs, it's short and low and yet, for some strange reason, Len feels lightheaded with it. He half-staggers forward a step toward the stranger, drawn to the laugh like a moth to flame. He finds himself leaning on the bar top, the dirty glasses clattering as he lets them go. One tips over and rolls, coming to a stop just at the edge. 

The stranger leans over, _too close_. He smells of—he smells of grass and meadow, of woods and a clear-running brook. 

"I don't have money," the stranger says, amused. 

Len frowns, the fingers of one hand curling into a fist until his knuckles turn white. He looks down at his own hand, confused at the reaction. He forces his hand to relax. 

"On the house, then," Len says. 

The stranger laughs again, reaching out to run light, warm fingers over the back of his hand. 

(His hands are warm, Len realizes muddily, as if it was a thought in a long-ago dream, as if he was a great distance away from himself. There's a blizzard outside, and he's supposed to have traveled miles and miles in it, but his hands are as warm as a summer day.) 

"Nothing is free, dear, and I shall not owe a debt, even to thee." 

There's that light in his eyes again, a green not of this world. The incisors of the stranger's teeth seem unnaturally sharp. Len blinks and it's gone. The stranger's eyes are but a soft, plain hazel. His teeth are rounded and white.

Len clears his throat, shakes his head and steps back away from the bar, away from the stranger, wondering at the man's bold actions, wondering at his own reactions. 

_Why didn't he lock the door?_

"Then what do you have to pay with?" 

The stranger leans back, his wide grin falling into a wry slash of mischief. "I have information for you," he says simply, and Len notices that the strange lilting accent from just a moment before is completely gone, leaving behind the normal, rough speak Len's used to hearing from the local townsfolk. 

"What kind of information could of be use to me?" Len asks, folding his arms in front of him as much to affect an air of sternness as to keep them for reaching out to the stranger again. 

"I know from whom you hide," the stranger says. "I know what chases you. I know who you were before you hid yourself as a lowly barkeep." 

Len stills, an absolute predator before it strikes. He looks hard at the stranger but for the life of him can't figure him out. He's plain—Len had thought him handsome when he first walked in, had thought him the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen just moments ago, but now he's just a freckled stranger, barely out of youth, with dull brown hair and unremarkable features. He's no threat. His information probably isn't nearly as good as he thinks it is. 

Still, no one knows that Len the Barkeep is a mask he's hiding behind. No one knows that he's fled here and hid here, in the wilds of this outpost town, where it snows more than not, and where his patrons are too tired and overworked by the land to take too much notice of their quiet tavern owner. 

"Choose what you will have," Len finally says, indicating the rows of glass bottles behind him. 

The stranger perks up, almost disproportionately pleased. "It's a bargain then?" 

Len raises his eyebrows at the phrasing but nods nonetheless. "It's a bargain. Choose, stranger." 

The stranger leans almost completely over the counter, like he's more a boy told he can choose a toy or candy from the store. He points to the bottles, each in turn, starting at the top left. 

_"Maypole. Maple.  
Catch and carry.   
Ash and Ember.   
Elderberry."_

On "elderberry" he stops on an elderberry wine. He looks up at Len through dark lashes, and Len has that feeling again, where he's looking at a double image, a plain and worn traveler transposed over something _else_. 

"May I try it first?" 

"Do you have information to pay for it?" Len quickly rejoins. The stranger's mischievous smile widens, clearly delighted with something Len did. 

"You learn very quickly," he says, almost approvingly. "I dare say I have information enough to pay for a taste--two tastes--and a drink." 

Len nods and pours a splash in a clean glass. The stranger brings it to his mouth, eyes never leaving Len as he ventures a taste. He lowers the glass, a few droplets of wine staining plush lips. He shakes his head, slides the glass back to Len. "I think I'll try something else." He points back to the rows of bottles. 

_"Woolen. Woman.  
Moon at night."_

Len suddenly realizes that it's a counting rhyme, like the kids sometimes use to choose between objects or to choose players for their impromptu street games, but one he's never heard of before. It seems old, somehow, yellowed and aged like an antique book. It seems more like an invocation than a nursery rhyme. 

_"Willow. Window.  
Candlelight."_

This time he stops on an herbal liqueur, yellow in color. Len looks at the stranger as he tilts his head back and swallows the half mouthful he poured, but this time, for the first time since the stranger came into his bar, Len's able to _See_. 

What was a ragged, worn brown cloak turns into rich, velvety fabric. What was a dark grey shirt and nondescript tan trousers ripples into smooth, pale green material, cut appealingly to suit his frame and trimmed with delicate silver filigree designs. 

His eyes are the bright color Len's glimpsed before, but this time they don't blink back into the plain, forgettable color, but remain haunting and empyrean. His hair, brown and dull before, becomes highlighted with pale golds, as if the sun were shining on it instead of a few paltry candles. His ears seem to elongate into dainty points that don't seem quite human. 

And then he grins at Len again. This time, Len clearly sees sharp, inhuman teeth.

Len can finally see the things his eyes had been trying but failing to tell him for the past several minutes. Though it's snowing outside, the stranger's clothes aren't cold or damp. Len risks a glance behind the stranger to the door. 

Bolted shut, as it had been when Len had closed it before the stranger had come.

Magic, he realizes. Glamour. 

_Fae._

Len frowns, reaching under the bar for his dagger before making his slow way around and onto the open floor. He holds his weapon at his side, the weight a small comfort. 

"Broke my glamour, then?" The fairy asks, keeping eerie eyes on Len's movements, his slash of a smile unreadable. "You've been fighting it since I walked in. They thought they burned you out, didn’t they? Thought they scooped out all of your magic and memories and left behind a weak husk to chase and frighten and torture. I don't think so, though. I think they're in for a nasty surprise." 

Len takes a step forward and he feels something within him. Something dark and terrible, something _powerful_ , stir like a beast sleepily raising its massive head. It's gone just as quickly, and even though his mind doesn't understand it, it's like his bones do. 

"Who are you? What are you? What have you trespassed into my tavern for, Fairy?" 

The fairy steps closer, heedless of the blade in Len's hand. The smell of meadow and flowers is heady, the fairy's beauty unyielding. 

But Len may be a mortal, a tavern owner and barkeep, a con man on the run from shadows he can't see, much less comprehend. But he, too, is unyielding. He doesn't break eye contact, doesn't back down, lifts his weapon away from his body, ready to attack. 

He will be prey no longer. 

The fairy only tilts his head. "Names are powerful, Leonard Michael Snart," Len shivers at his Name, feels the core of himself respond to the power in the fairy's voice. "And I shall not give you power over me. But you may call be Barry, for now, as you used to." 

Len blinks, momentarily stunned. "Used to?" 

Barry continues, carefully avoiding Len’s question. "As for why I'm here, I came to bargain: a drink for information. Though it seems we will not have time for the drink part, so you shall have to owe me a favor." 

"You were going to tell me who was after me. Who's been trying to kill me, who chased me to this hellish town, forced me to hide. Was it you?" 

Barry shakes his head and for the first time his impish, playful demeanor seems to falter, leaving a glimpse of something lonesome and angry. And then it's gone, and nothing is left but the spritely creature that ruined Len's night. 

"'Twas not I," Barry says. "But I came to tell you who. But it seems you'll find out for yourself soon enough." 

"Why is that?" 

The answer comes with the tavern's door crashing inward. The heavy door splinters with the first hit. With the second, it comes off its hinges with an ear-splitting sound of wood and metal. 

The things that come in to his bar, his safehouse for the past few years, are indescribable. Every time he tries to catalog features, every time he tries to count claw and limb, his mind simply skitters past it, like their presence is too slippery to comprehend. 

Barry, however, doesn't seem to have any problem seeing the monsters. He steps forward, a short spear suddenly in his hand. At first, Len had only smelled the... things, the monsters. They smelled of rust and mildew, death and rot. But now something else fills the room, the smell of ozone and summer rain. Lightning sparks at the tip of Barry's spear, up his fingers and arm, over his back, where it writhes and crackles between his shoulder blades like a pair of wings. 

"It seems that I was not as far ahead of our enemies as I thought," Barry murmurs thoughtfully. "These are but a few of the shadows that have been at your heel these past years, Len." 

"Only a few?" Len asks in a confident drawl he does not quite feel. "Your information comes a little late, Barry." 

Barry spares a quick, side-eyed glance to Len. The corner of his mouth curls in genuine, if grim, amusement. "Maybe we should call our bargain even after all?" 

"Sweet Prince," the monsters rumble in unison and in a mockery of reverence. Len's still struggling to grasp their shape, their number. But, as with Barry before his glamour broke, Len’s starting to see past it and wishes he hadn't. He catches glimpses of massive teeth, blooded claws, and brutally twisted and sinuous bodies. "It seems you have finally found the one you lost." 

"He was never lost. Not to me," Barry says, fiercely, before raising his spear. His next words are half-whispered, clearly to Len. "Stay close until you can properly see them. I should be more than enough for them." 

The monsters—dark fairies, possibly, Len now wishes he'd listened more to the fairy tales and children's rhymes—cackle lowly in that weird, echoing unison again. "We shall rend your flesh from your bones, summer princeling, and then take you to our master, where you shall live with his tender mercies until he deems fit to end your pathetic existence." 

Barry's grip tightens on his spear as he lifts it and points it at the monster furthest to the left. It's hard to tell, Len's eyes keep trying to slide just past the presence of the dark beings, but he thinks that there are maybe six of the dark fairies crowding in his small bar, looming between them and the exit. 

Barry picks up the counting rhyme from earlier, pointing his spear at each fairy in turn. 

_"Barrel. Barley.  
Stone and stave.   
Wind and water."_

Barry's sharp teeth gleam in the light of his lightning wings as he sings. He reaches the end of the line and his spear swings back to the middle monster for his ending rhyme. 

_"Misbehave."_

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> The "Misbehave" rhyme is from _The Name of the Wind_ by Rothfuss. 
> 
> Kudos/comments/conversation always welcome. ♥︎♥︎ Thanks for reading! :)


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